Manager - Acquiring Business

About the role

Emaratech is looking for a Manager - Acquiring Business in Dubai. The role owns the acquiring business end to end: its growth, margin and setup. It sets the acquiring strategy, manages the acquiring banks, processors and card schemes behind it, and ensures every merchant is priced, onboarded, settled and monitored correctly. The manager does not manage a sales team directly.

Key responsibilities

• Own the acquiring business plan and budget (TPV, revenue, take rate, cost of acceptance and margin) and set segment and channel targets with sales managers
• Lead the move from third-party acquirers to in-house acquiring, including the merchant and sub-merchant (payment facilitator) model and MID strategy
• Manage relationships and contracts with acquiring banks, processors, gateways and card schemes, negotiate costs and drive smart routing
• Own scheme compliance (MCC, chargeback and fraud thresholds, certifications) and work with CBUAE-facing teams on regulatory requirements
• Own the acquiring rate cards by MCC, card type and channel, approve deal pricing and build acquiring propositions
• Set the merchant onboarding policy with Risk and Compliance, keep turnaround times fast and oversee settlement, reconciliation, chargebacks and fraud monitoring
• Work with Product on the acquiring roadmap and write business cases for new products
• Train sales teams on acquiring products and pricing, and give them rate cards, proposition templates and onboarding checklists

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Finance, Business or a related field; an MBA or payments certification is an advantage
• 8-12 years in merchant acquiring with a bank, acquirer, PSP or payment facilitator
• Experience owning an acquiring P&L, product line or major merchant portfolio, and managing acquiring banks, processors or schemes
• Experience setting up a new acquiring business, licence or payment facilitator model, and UAE or GCC acquiring experience, is a strong advantage
• Fluent English; Arabic is an advantage

Required skills

• End-to-end card transaction flows and acquiring economics (interchange, MDR, scheme fees)
• Gateways, 3DS, tokenisation, POS and SoftPOS, ECR integrations and PCI DSS
• Scheme rules, MCC, KYB and underwriting, chargeback and fraud monitoring
• Payment facilitator models and local payment methods such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, Aani and BNPL
• Strong negotiation and commercial judgement, clear writing and presentation